Social-media impersonation scam spike
Kinetiq's assessment for RD-F-109 — scored yellow on the v1.7.0 rubric. The evidence below is the curator's reasoning for this score.
Evidence summary #
Applicable: yes. Kinetiq is the #1 Hyperliquid LST at $840M TVL — a high-attention impersonation target. Observed in routine Google searches (2026-05-17): at minimum 5 active impersonating domains: kinietiq.io (letter transposition), kinietiq.co (same transposition, different TLD), kineitiq.cc (letter insertion, branding themselves 'Premier Liquid Staking | Hyperliquid Staking Solutions'), klnetiq.xyz (l substituted for first i, SAME TLD as official kinetiq.xyz), kinetiq-hyperliquid.com (descriptive append). Additionally kinetiqai.xyz appeared. Active Hyperliquid phishing landscape documented by OneKey (2026). No confirmed user-loss events attributed to Kinetiq-specific impersonation in public sources as of assessment date. Yellow (not red) because no confirmed active user-loss from Kinetiq-specific impersonation is documented; if confirmed user-losses emerge, upgrade to red. The concurrent existence of 5+ impersonator domains for the same $840M LST is a materially elevated impersonati
Sources #
- URLhttps://kinetiq.xyzretrieved 2026-05-17
- OneKey — Hyperliquid Phishing Scam 2026OneKey blog documenting Hyperliquid ecosystem phishing landscape including domain-swap impersonation vectorsretrieved 2026-05-17
- kinietiq.io — active Kinetiq impersonator domain (letter transposition)Google search results for 'Kinetiq kHYPE HyperEVM security incident exploit 2025 2026' returned kinietiq.io, kinetiq-hyperliquid.com, kinetiq.trade; 'Kinetiq kinetiq.xyz official domain warning impersonator' returned klnetiq.xyz, kinietiq.co, kineitiq.cc; retrieved 2026-05-17retrieved 2026-05-17
Methodology #
Detect a sharp uptick in Discord/Telegram/X accounts impersonating the protocol team or announcing fake airdrops.
See the full factor methodology and distribution across all protocols →